Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide
To show you the dead angels that they used to hide.
But why did they pick you to sympathize with their side?
Oh, how could they ever mistake you?
They wished you’d accepted the blame for the farm,
But with the sea at your feet and the phony false alarm,
And with the child of a hoodlum wrapped up in your arms,
How could they ever, ever persuade you?

- Bob Dylan, from “Sad Eyed Lady Of the Lowlands”

Dana Levin, "The Weatherman"

My house was a house of winds,
and my father was of the wind,
and we were of the earth

and we were torn by him, we were
stripped by him, by the bellows
of his body, by the twisting

of his voice coming shaking,
elemental, before the kitchen table
where we sat like stones and he stood

like a hammer over the rocks
of our faces, and threw down the glasses
and threw down the plates, the hail of him

scattering across the tiled floor
as he whirled in his fury out the back door,
slamming into the air—

He was gone, he was gone
and the storm was coming, I could hear it
on the radio crackling in the kitchen

as we ran out the door and headed
for the cellar, the dirty wind gusting
and stinging our eyes as my mother

bent down and hurried with the lock—
When she opened the cellar doors
I thought I saw him coming, the grass

bowing down, bowing down, bowed flat
by the black clouds bearing down
like fists, so I ran out to the field

and opened my arms, the flayed skin of my coat
rippling behind me, the voice of my sister
yelling my name, as I streamed out

like a flag into the currents, and felt
the wind slam into all of my sockets,
and stood like a stick and was whittled

to pieces, flying off with the twigs
that kept pelting my face—
I was in the air

but in the arms of my mother, clutching me
and running us back towards the cellar,
and I held her, looking back,

and saw the tornado twisting down
from the sky, coming for us
as we ran on the earth,

and I stretched out my arms because I wanted
to touch it, I stretched out my arms
because I wanted to fly

with the fence-posts in that furious
rapture, in that sky that loved the earth
and hurled the wind down to seize it—

And then we were in the cellar, in the darkness
with the jam jars, while he roared
and tore past our doors.

Marge Piercy, "What Are Big Girls Made Of?"

The construction of a woman:
a woman is not made of flesh
of bone and sinew
belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.
She is manufactured like a sports sedan.
She is retooled, refitted and redesigned
every decade.

Cecile had been seduction itself in college.
She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,
her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed
in the dark red lipstick of desire.

She visited in ‘68 still wearing skirts
tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,
while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,
lipstick pale as apricot milk,
hair loose as a horse’s mane. Oh dear,
I thought in my superiority of the moment,
whatever has happened to poor Cecile?
She was out of fashion, out of the game,
disqualified, disdained, dis-
membered from the club of desire.

Look at pictures in French fashion
magazines of the 18th century:
century of the ultimate lady
fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.
Paniers bring her hips out three feet
each way, while the waist is pinched
and the belly flattened under wood.
The breasts are stuffed up and out
offered like apples in a bowl.
The tiny foot is encased in a slipper
never meant for walking.
On top is a grandiose headache:
hair like a museum piece, daily
ornamented with ribbons, vases,
grottoes, mountains, frigates in full
sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy
of a hairdresser turned loose.
The hats were rococo wedding cakes
that would dim the Las Vegas strip.
Here is a woman forced into shape
rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:
a woman made of pain.

How superior we are now: see the modern woman
thin as a blade of scissors.
She runs on a treadmill every morning,
fits herself into machines of weights
and pulleys to heave and grunt,
an image in her mind she can never
approximate, a body of rosy
glass that never wrinkles,
never grows, never fades. She
sits at the table closing her eyes to food
hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain.

A cat or dog approaches another,
they sniff noses. They sniff asses.
They bristle or lick. They fall
in love as often as we do,
as passionately. But they fall
in love or lust with furry flesh,
not hoop skirts or push up bras
rib removal or liposuction.
It is not for male or female dogs
that poodles are clipped
to topiary hedges.

If only we could like each other raw.
If only we could love ourselves
like healthy babies burbling in our arms.
If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed
to need what is sold us.
Why should we want to live inside ads?
Why should we want to scourge our softness
to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?
Why should we punish each other with scorn
as if to have a large ass
were worse than being greedy or mean?

When will women not be compelled
to view their bodies as science projects,
gardens to be weeded,
dogs to be trained?
When will a woman cease
to be made of pain?